10 of wildest Liz Truss's revelations in 'Ten Years to Save the West'

Despite being the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister, Liz Truss nonetheless feels like she has a lot to say about her 49-day premiership, the left, the establishment and plenty of other topics in her new book Ten Years to Save the West – reportedly clocking in with a word count of around 100,000 words.

We first got an idea of what to expect all the way back in September, when Truss said in a statement: “I want to share the lessons from my experience in government and those international meetings where I was often the only conservative in the room and demonstrate that we have stark choices to make if we wish to avoid a managed decline of the Western architecture that has presided over generations of relative peace and prosperity.”

She also wrote on Twitter/X that it would address “disastrous ideas” from the left, in news which suggests she’s failed to read the room and acknowledge her own disastrous idea – the mini-Budget – which tanked the economy and brought an end to her time in No 10.

Now, after the book was finally published on Tuesday, we’ve rounded up all the key points contained in the 300-odd pages, so you don’t have to fork out 15 or 20 quid to buy a copy (although, why would you?)

“Why me? Why now?”

This was apparently what Truss thought to herself when she was told the late Queen had died just two days into her job as prime minister. She also concedes that “maybe I should have listened” to the royal’s advice for her to “pace yourself”.

We wonder what makes her think that…

Truss also writes that the Queen’s last words to her, two days before her passing, were that she would “see you again next week”.

Even her husband knew Truss’s time as PM “would all end in tears”

Explaining that she was working in Bali as foreign secretary at the time of her predecessor, Boris Johnson, announcing his resignation, Truss writes that as she “walked along the beach in Indonesia I started crying”.

“Even Hugh, who predicted it would all end in tears, accepted that this was the moment I was expected to run and that if I didn’t, people would say I had bottled it,” she says.

Trying to scrap the Cop26 climate conference (and wanting other institutions and laws to be abolished)

Truss thought the environmental summit, held in Glasgow back in 2021, was “environmental virtue signalling” and “strongly questioned” whether the “jamboree” should be a government priority given the price tag for the event coming in at around £200 million.

Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, reports the ex-PM writes about wanting to get rid of Andrew Bailey as the governor of the Bank of England; scrap the independent Office for Budget Responsibility; and pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights.

He also notes Truss’ frustration with not overturning the Human Rights Act.

Meanwhile, in an interview with LBC’s Iain Dale prior to the book’s publication, Truss said she discussed “abolishing the Equality Act” with No 10 while serving as the Minister for Women and Equalities, because it is a “terrible piece of legislation that embeds identity politics”.

She also claimed it “says whether you’re a woman or whether you’re Black or whether you’re gay, is more important than what your talents are, what your capabilities are”, which isn’t true – it actually prohibits discrimination based on a number of protected characteristics.

“Watermelon” Tories

Like some weird parody of the hit Harry Styles song, Truss writes the debate around environmental policy is “the single greatest example of Conservatives over the last few decades losing arguments to the Left” as a result of environmentalists who are actually just “watermelons” – basically, green on the outside and red (that is, socialist or left) on the inside.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she fumes that some Conservatives are accepting extremist environmentalist dogma and wokeism”.

She also takes a leaf out of the book of American politics by branding some of her colleagues “Conservatives In Name Only” or CINOs – similar to politicians across the pond who say there are RINOs or “Republicans In Name Only”.

Fleas in No 10

“The place was infested with fleas. Some claimed that it was down to Boris and Carrie’s dog Dilyn, but there was no conclusive evidence. In any case, the entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching,” she writes.

Truss also complains about being “effectively a prisoner” during her time in No 10, writing about the place being “infested with fleas”, the difficulty of getting Ocado deliveries sent to Downing Street, and having to “organise my own hair and makeup appointments”.

“On one occasion when I had a cough, my diary secretary had to go out in the middle of the night to buy me some medicine. This clearly wasn’t her job, but there was no one else to ask,” she bemoans.

It’s a hard life being the most powerful person in the country, it seems…

Taking aim at Biden, “activist” civil servants and the “snobbery” of the judiciary

Truss accuses the US president of “utter hypocrisy and ignorance” over his criticism of her chaotic mini-Budget and for joining the “pile-on” of scepticism of her economic policies.

“The top rate of income tax in the U.S. was 37 per cent and only charged to people earning the equivalent of £483,094 and above. By contrast, the top rate in the UK was 45 per cent and paid by those on more than £150,000,” she vents.

On civil servants, she writes: “If you're an environmentalist, you go and work at the Environment Department and if you're an equality campaigner, you go and work at the Government Equalities Office," she said.

"Thus, we end up with activists as civil servants, which I don't think happened in the past and which can present real problems."

Truss also says she was shocked by the “sheer level of snobbery” in the judiciary, which she describes as a “self-perpetuating oligarchy”.

Almost puking on Sue Gray

In addition to former senior civil servant Sue Gray making headlines for her damning report on the Partygate scandal, the official – now working for Keir Starmer and the Labour Party – could possibly have made the news as well for being puked on by Liz Truss.

Truss writes that she had just thrown up when Gray tried to offer “a hug of commiseration” (as POLITICO puts it) back in 2017 when she had been hit with a ministerial demotion.

Awkward.

Being “too busy” to back Brexit

While Boris Johnson had to confirm the embarrassing fact that he had penned Telegraph columns for both leave and remain during the 2016 EU referendum campaign, Truss writes she was “too busy” to support leaving the trade bloc at the time and may have switched to supporting Vote Leave if she had the time “for more existential thinking”.

“Had I spent more of my time thinking about it during those years, I might have come to share that view… but I had been busy as a minister, knee-deep in floods and other distractions,” she writes.

Why she resigned

The South West Norfolk MP says her resignation as PM came about following Suella Braverman’s breach of the Ministerial Code (over which she left her role as home secretary) and a Labour vote on fracking which ended up being framed as a “confidence motion”.

She writes: “It soon emerged there’d been angry scenes during the vote, with our whips openly arguing with MPs and tempers running high.

“I then heard that the Chief Whip Wendy Morton and her deputy had both resigned, saying they were unable to put up with the abuse they were getting. This wasn’t a huge surprise. Right from the outset, they’d faced quite appalling behaviour from some of our own MPs, who made their life hell.”

While she managed to persuade them to stay in their posts, she later found the Whips’ office “in utter chaos”.

“All around the Commons, I also saw looks of despair on the faces of colleagues. That’s when I thought: this is done. This is terminal,” admits Truss.

An actual concession

Readers will also spot a concession from the Tory politician – about handling her brief as justice secretary “in a clumsy fashion” due to being “full frontal”.

“I am gregarious and I like people, but even my best friends wouldn't describe me as a great people manager,” she concedes.

We invested in collating this nonsense so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

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